By Dave Lahr: Nonito Donaire’s fans are foaming at the mouth about Donaire’s hand speed, seemingly tripping over themselves in giving praise to him for this one small asset. Unfortunately, fighters with good hand speed are a dime a doze, and it doesn’t translate into these fighters being actually any good. It takes a lot more than hand speed to be a really good fighter. It takes heart, determination and god given talent. And those assets, I hate to say, all belong to WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel (44-2-2, 34 KO’s).

That’s why he’s the champion and Donaire is just a simple challenger. Donaire is entering the ring with little more than hand speed and the support of his legions of boxing fans, while Montiel is going to be coming in with the deck stacked heavily in his favor due to his better power, heart, experience and overall boxing skills. This is going to be a total blowout, I’m afraid. Like I’ve said before, Donaire will start out looking good in the first couple of rounds, but as soon as Montiel lands, Donaire is going to take off like a scalded dog and start running for his life to keep from tasting Montiel’s vicious power.

I know this because this is what happened in Donaire’s fight with Rafael Concepcion in 2009, and Montiel is a much bigger puncher than Concepcion. I don’t like Donaire’s reactions when getting hit by good shots. I saw the same thing when he got tagged by Wladimir Sidorenko in his last fight. There was a brief moment after Sidorenko hit Donaire where Donaire backed up, and it looked like he was about to drop. He collected himself well, but it showed that the guy’s chin isn’t good and he doesn’t like to get hit.